The Raspberry Pi Dynamic Headlight Can Tell You How Fast You’re Cycling

A Brooklynite named Matt Richardson has built a working prototype of a bicycle headlight that uses a Raspberry Pi to project his current traveling speed as he rides around the city. Richardson calls it the Raspberry Pi Dynamic Headlight, and it’s one of those jaw-dropping DIY projects that makes you wonder why this isn’t something you can buy in a store yet.

The prototype has a small projector mounted to the handlebars of the bicycle, which is connected to the Raspberry Pi via HDMI cable. The projector and the Raspberry Pi are both powered by a USB battery pack. The Raspberry Pi and the battery pack seem to be crudely glued to a triangular piece of wood that is strapped onto the center of the bike, but Richardson says in his video that he’s hoping that future prototypes will combine all the components into one single piece that will be mounted onto the handlebars.

The Dynamic Headlight for now only projects the speed of the bike, but Richardson is looking to add all sorts of interesting functions to future iterations like GPS and other “animations and visualizations”. He’s also planning on writing about it for MAKE and including instructions for those that are brave enough to build one for themselves.

Someone needs to get him some of that Veronica Mars Kickstarter money, stat.